Ghosts of the White House

I'm trying not to sneeze right now. So that's like what I'm yeah, focused focused on. You know what works? If you imagine a banana flying around the world, it really makes your sneeze go away. Why did it do that? I don't know. Did it work? Yeah, but I mean it's still in there. It feels like that I should have sneezed. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the Internet. I'm Edwin and I'm Michelle. Everybody here knows Michelle likes history. I mean I can't lie here as close as I get to history as probably dark history. And when I was researching all this stuff, I was like, you know, there's dark history, like there's war and all these things like that disaster, a lot of death. But then there's also like the paranormal side, and I think I get that specific, like that arm of like so this is why, so like there's a ghost here, why what happened? And then it turns out, is this story that happened in the sixteen hundreds or the you know, long ago very interesting? But if we take it back up to when the White House was being built. Wait are we getting in the time? I think we should. I've never I've never led the expedition. Yeah, we could do. I don't know how to do this. Okay, well we just get in. What year are we going to We're going to seventeen ninety one. Okay, well here we go. So we are in seventeen ninety one. Now the White House was ordered by George Washington to be built, like it's just like hey, He's like, hey, we should build a place. And it built the first version of the White House, but that was the temporary home of John Adams and Abigail Adams. Eight years after that and then it was burnt like to the ground, like it was just a burned down building. Was that because of a skirmish like the eighteen twelve War or something like that? Exactly show you one, yay, Yeah, it's the War of eighteen twelve. British soldiers became determined to burn it to the ground, like that was their objective too, like one of them and they're like, this is important to the United States, we must burn it down anyway. This other guy, James Hobin, was tasked with the redesign and the construction of the new version of the White House. It was ready eighteen seventeen President James Monroe moved in, and it wasn't even fully constructed. Like some parts are still you know, you're still hear well, I guess you wouldn't hear drills, you would hear the hammers or something like that. But that place that started with such a rough start build, it gets burnt, rebuilt. War around there is significant. You're starting a new country, so like it's still like, should we invest in a building that's not going to last because our country's going to die? Is it going to be taken over? Are these are all valid questions. It was a rough and tumble time of angry. Yes, we built this, We've got to protect it. So such a rough start to a place could attract ghosts and sightings of these really tough times. You and I've never toured the White House. I have it either. As you probably know, some of the best gossip comes from secretaries in businesses. Well, some of the best witness accounts from a place like the White House would come from people that are there all the time, like janitors and other employees. Like the house staff doesn't change depending on who's present. There's an official duster for example, Like there's cooks, Dorman, butlers. I don't know they had butlers, but I guess they had butler's back then. They still have butlers. People can still be a butler. Really yeah, who would have a butler? A rich person? Wow, I learned something new. Such was the case with Jeremiah Smith, an employee at the White House, worked there during the Ulysses S. Grant administration, and he worked there for thirty five years until he retired. He was all the jobs that I mentioned earlier, footman, butler, Dorman, cook even became official duster, which is official. It's an important job, it is. Everybody loved Jeremiah like he was entertaining. He had a bunch of stories. But in terms of ghosts, he said that he had seen presidents Grant, McKinley, and Lincoln. There was some truth to a lot of those things. Like there was there was this thing called literally the Thing. The thing is the nickname of a teen boy who was estimated to be around fourteen or fifteen years old, and he was blamed for the hysteria around the White House and this apparition that was there when presidents get elected they come in with the new staff and administrators that help run day to day operations and stuff like that, but the house staff usually stays like they're just there. During President tafts administration, staff members started noticing a strange apparition around the house and that sense was very strange, and members of the staff, when they were standing or sitting, they would feel a slight pressure on their shoulder, feeling almost as if a child was leaning over them to see what they were doing. But a little kid. Imagine you're working on something, I feel a little kid kind of lean over it. It's kind of a familiar feeling. Anyway, That's what the thing was, and they actually found out that this was this ghost, this apparition of this teen boy who was fourteen to fifteen. People that were working at the White House kept seeing this figure and more and more people can coming forward saying, hey, this is real. I've seen it two way and I felt it too. Even President Taft had gotten involved and resorted to threatening with an order that any person not the ghost to leave. I was gonna say, like, yeah, I order you to leave the White Houses, and he signs it, it's official, and then you have to He threatened with an order that any person who spoke with the thing is going to was going to be fired. Wow. And also the Obama family said that they would hear strange noises in the hallways at night, they would feel something chewing or gnawing at their feet in the no what it's Lincoln, Lincoln. This whole time, everything indicates that something is there. One night, twin sisters Jenna and Barbara, daughters of President Bush, were in their bedroom when from the fireplace, they start to hear something strange. It was the sound of a piano and it was music from another era. Also, one time, when President Reagan was passing by the Lincoln bedroom, his dog would always bark right at the entrance and he would just nudge him like, hey, come on, let's just go inside. The dog would not and dogs no things. I'm telling you. Dogs can sense stuff, and he could sense Lincoln being like mangan no, thank you. His daughter, like President Reagan's daughter and son in law, also had experiences with the apparition in that bedroom the Lincoln One. Witnesses to his ghost even include Winston Churchill. Huh who who was he? He? He helped win World War two? Just that like that's all he did. He was their prime minister a few times in a few different crises, but I think World War Two is probably his biggest class to famous. But anyway, he once stayed in the Lincoln bedroom and then gave his own account that yes, in fact, President Lincoln did appear in that room. You know. They also say that I don't know the story here of Andrew Jackson, right, but I know that he was super pissed when he lost to John Quincy Adams, saying that Adams had cheated. He would curse at the walls, stomp his shoes. He was just he was angry. But it seems like that habit followed him in the afterlife because the room where he stayed, the Rose Room, is thought to be one of the most haunted rooms in the entire estate. He was heard through one of the first lady's seances, actually, which is Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, our favorite spiritualist. I appreciate her. She would try to talk to spirits in the White House and she would tell people that she would hear the sound of Andrew Jackson stomping, pacing, swearing through the walls. What would you swear like? Back then, like, what were the swears? Was there an F word back then? That's where I'm kind of at a loss. I don't know for sure. What's the history of the word fuck? Write in linguistic professors and let us know. Thank you, scary mystery, surprise cares and even President Truman claimed to have heard Jackson stomping. How do they know it was him? I don't know. He was probably the only one with them, I don't know. He wrote it in a letter to his wife. Actually he was saying, quote, I sit here in this old house and to work on foreign affairs, read reports, and work on speeches, all the while listening to the ghosts walk up and down the hallway. And even right here in the study the floors pop and the drapes moved back and forth. I can just imagine old Andy and Teddy having an argument over Franklin. That's a pretty good ghost story, he just wrote. Also, to know that you might also become a ghost there. Who knows? Like there's just you know, they say that they hear like the laughter of Jackson. But this is recent too, Like in the nineteen sixties the staff claimed that they could hear him like they know because it came directly from his old bedroom in the White House. Oh funny, And this is all guttural, like you know, like God. The East room of the White House was supposedly the warmest and the driest, so Abigol Adams, the wife of President Adams, had heard, so she would use a room to hang laundry there and to dry it when it's been washed. And remember that at the time, Washington, d c. Was only a small town by the Potomac River, so has very swampy grounds. And yes, first ladies also did their own laundry like that was a thing. But the White House staff would frequently see Abigail wearing her cap and the shawl, heading right for the East Room with her arms outstretched holding a phantom basket of laundry. Maybe she really loved doing a laundry. Maybe that was like one of her joys in life, was doing laundry, the fresh smell of sheets. Also, there's another story here of David Burns. He was a man who owned the land and sold it for the White House to be built there, and they say that his voice can still be heard there. The first time it was heard, it was President Franklin Roosevelt who heard the distinct voice coming from the Yellow Oval room as it said, I'm mister Burns, just introducing himself. I guess a guard during the Truman administration was performing his duties when suddenly he heard the same voice say I'm mister Burns. He was confused, and then he went to look for the Secretary of State, who was James Burns Byrnes and asking around, and after a quick search, he found out the Secondary of State had not been at the White House that day. Weird. I mean, there's a lot of these ghost stories, but obviously the most famous ghost President Abraham Lincoln, who already had a series of tragic events following him even prior to when he was a president, and he stopped being a president because of a tragic event death. Thank you for clarifying. I wasn't sure. It's very very sad, life, very tragic. In eighteen sixty two, their eleven year old son Willie died. Marytal Lincoln was devastated, right, and she started looking for closure in spirits and seances and getting a psychic group together in Georgetown. So mediums had even gotten invited to the White House and they would go straight to the Red Room, where they would attempt to contact their dead son. Willie, one of the psychic mediums, had written a memoir where she also speaks about these meetings, saying that how even President Lincoln attended some of them with his wife, and she said that the President was skeptical at first, then came a believer something was involved with his dreams. Like he was telling his friend Ward Hill Layman that he had been having a dream that had been annoying him. He was walking completely lost among a group of sobbing mourners when he saw a corpse lying down in the East room. In the confusion, he asked the soldier who was standing, who is dead in the White House, and the guard replied that it was a president who was killed by an assassin. Soon after that dream, President Lincoln was shot in the head while attending a play when John Wilkes Booth sneaked into the fourth Theater. The assassin managed to escape, but the hunt was on, and it didn't take long for everyone to realize that this had been a conspiracy against a president and not a single person working alone. The authorities managed a quick investigation that tried the guilty parties to found a woman, Mary, guilty for conspiring to kill the president, and she was said tense to death on July seventh of that year. People have heard voices in her old house along with other noises, especially on the second floor. Mary Todd Lincoln continue with the Sean says even after her husband's assassination, it was a way to prefer to process deaths, like it's just how she did it. It's her way. But President Lincoln still roams the White House and even the Ford Theater right at that box where he was shot. Some people say that you can hear the sound of a gun shot and screamed. The place where he was taken immediately after being shot, which is the Peterson House. People claim to feel a very heavy presence there and overcome with sadness. And you can actually see the real bloodstained sheets on display there today. They've kept them. I guess, yeah, they're there. It's a little weird, but also like smart on their part, you know, to have the foresight to be like, well, he's dead. I guess we should frame these sheets for history. I wouldn't do, but I appreciate it because now it's like, oh, wow, those are the actual sheets or that's his actual blood. Wow, I guess I'm surprised Zach Begans hasn't bought it and like put it in his Yeah. Yeah. They say that even the son Willie Lincoln has been seen roaming around the White House by staff members, especially during the Grant administration during the eighteen seventies. But there's a lot, Like there's a lot, Like people say that they've heard Thomas Jefferson and his violin in the Yellow Oval Room. Dolly Madison, the wife of President James Madison, also known to protect the White House Rose Garden. President Henry Harrison was president for only a month and it was the first president to die in the White House, also said to haunt the attic now because he doesn't get the main house, like so he has to go because he was just like he was only there three months. So they're like, sorry, sorry, you have to go be in the attic. Okay. There's just a bunch of ghosts, like even the ghost of a British soldier that roams around carrying a torch, just like they did during the War of eighteen twelve. Oh wow, even nowadays, like because this is a huge, huge place, one hundred and thirty two room, six floors. It's huge. People say that with all the history, all the space that's there, it's likely to be haunted because of just all the eras is to live through. And they say that, you know when when presidents they're used to living there because they have to and maybe they want to, they get used to that, and like since it takes so much out of them, so much energy, sometimes they think like, oh, this is this was my purpose in life, so they just want to stick around the White House. But it's creepy, just as any historical mansion would be to me. But it doesn't look old and you know, run down, but it's still like it's just a cover up. So like to me, it still has the same value as like this old abandoned mansion. But really this one has been kept as in you know, maintenance, constant maintenance. I mean, imagine talking to all the layers of ghosts on that property, you know, be pretty crazy, you know, going from the soldier with the flame and then you go to Lincoln with his little foot fetish now which only developed after death. So you know, guys, don't at me about this. Lincoln's foot fetish only developed after death. So there's you know, no historical record of it, but now he likes to suck on toes. So god, President Lincoln, President Lincoln, our best friend, President Lincoln. Man. But like how you said earlier, like it's it might be weird for a president nowadays to be like, wow, I might actually be a ghost here Clinton. I mean, is he playing his saxophone in there? Like? Does he? Yeah? Does Jimmy Carter raise peanuts? Will George Bush be looking for oil or painting his weird paintings oil paintings? Ah? Anyway, there's there's still many, many more stories that are going to develop with future presidents, hopefully as long as the United States stays alive and doesn't get invaded or collapses under its own government. This is a developing story. We'll get back to you, we'll update well. Stay tuned. Please if you're Apple Podcasts wherever Spotify, just leave us five stars, drop some stars please. Yeah, Oh that's it all right. What are we gonna talk about next week? Michelle, I don't know, but I think it'll be a surprise scary Mystery Surprise is hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Komarubies. This podcast was edited and sound designed by Sarah orhez Wendel a VW Sound